The Stinky Princess

Hoo baby, is it a Monday! It’s a mega-Monday! Fortunately almost everything has a straightforward solution.

The dog who rolled in skunk juice will get a bath. Actually a shower.

The leaky dishwasher door will get a new gasket.

Mick’s dead car will get what it needs. Helloooo warrantee! Fingers crossed it’s just a fritzed alternator and not rodents chewing up the wiring like what happened to his previous car and we ended up going into a huge financial hole because basically he needed a new car since rodent damage is NOT covered by warrantee. Nightmare City.

Be gone, evil Monday! You shall not win.

Back in May I gave myself a haircut. A rather severe buzzcut. My coif was less than half an inch long. I went that short because my hair was fried from the silver-blue experiment and its disastrous ‘repair’ of hooker blonde. Aside from trimming around my ears a few weeks ago my mop has grown unchecked since May and now looks like this:

 

 

Only not quite that sexy.

Trying to make something of the messy non-hairdo on Saturday when my sweetie insisted on taking me out it dawned on me that I am punishing myself with bad hair again. Stuttering horror over my weight plus massive guilt about not having a job. I swear it snuck up on me, I was not deliberately doing penance. Not in my top mind at all. Today I’m giving myself a trim and a serious dethatching. NOT a humblebrag when I say I have too much hair, but seriously only bed sheets should have a threadcount this high. Also when Mick gets paid on Friday I’m buying some super bleach and a completely ‘unsuitable’ hair color and do my head up right. If I am unemployed then I should take advantage of the freedoms that brings. First and foremost- really cool hair.

I’ve been crushing on mermaid hair for a while now, but have neither the youth nor the length to pull it off.

 

 

I’ll probably go with a deep raspberry or try the silver blue again. Depends on what sifts to the top when I go through my cold weather clothing. Not a lot fits anymore. Another thing that snuck up on me, because last year at this time all I wore was my work uniform and my pajamas after I got home.

One thing I know I need is a winter coat and I’ve been eyeballing this one over at Torrid.

 

 

I’ve always been a fan of military-style outerwear. Army jackets, pea coats, there was a time I’d have sold my soul (or bod) for a West Point cadet great coat.

 

 

Never got one of those but I did have a fabulous O.D. green Army trench coat from the late 1960s. I wore that thing to rags. I thought I was seriously styling in that coat but I probably looked more like a member of the PTA secret police.

I should probably go scrub my smelly dog and do something with this Azkaban hair and fight the evil that is this most Monday of Mondays.

 

Keep the good thought Mick’s car is a quick and easy fix, won’t you? ~LA

Prompt

In searching for an inspiring topic to write about I ended up at Pinterest and there among the gratitude lists and ‘What ifs’ I saw this…

Lemon Wedges

 

 

Snort. “Really? Bottom of the barrel much? ‘Lemon wedges’ what a dopey…well, actually lemon wedges, um, they, I mean I do have a thought, maybe a couple of thoughts, shit I have A LOT to say about lemon wedges.”

I am not particularly germphobic but lemon wedges creep me out. For one thing they usually sit around unrefrigerated in a container that is rarely washed. More lemon wedges are usually just dumped on top of the last few stragglers when the supply gets low. And even if the lemons are cut by gloved kitchen staff they are almost always fished out and jammed onto the rim of your glass by a bare handed server. Bar lemons are particularly nasty. If my drink shows up decorated by one of those pestilent things I immediately pull it off and wrap it in a napkin. If I am done the courtesy of being asked if I want lemon I don’t hear, “Lemon with that?” I hear, “Mucus, random schmutz, possibly plague in your beverage?” Brrr. Blech. No thank you.

Yet conversely and perversely, the smell of lemons signals ‘clean’ to me. I dearly love lemon scented cleansers. By far my favorite over pine, florals, and that ubiquitous ‘cleanser’ scent. Though any of those is preferable to bleach, ammonia, or Lysol. The only household scent that does it for me more than lemon is Niagara spray starch. Ironing is the happiest, most comforting smell in the world to me. Even above the olio of salt water, fish, hot grease, and Coppertone that means Seaside Heights.

The fans of ironing are a dying breed. At least the way my contemporaries and I remember ironing. Our mothers likely regarded ironing as a Sisyphean burden but the thump and “whssht PAH!” of a steam iron being stood upright, the musical jangle of wire hangers being untangled, the warm moist no-smell of damp cotton being pressed and the finishing touch of the final buff using Niagara spray starch…ahhh.

Have I wandered off from lemon wedges? Yes and no. I mentioned Seaside up there and lemon wedges belong with those memories too. I can’t believe that in all the times I’ve written about my summers at the shore I’ve never mentioned the mother’s helpers. Probably because no mother’s helper ever made much of an impression on our tribe of little beach savages. Every family brought a mother’s helper. Nothing as fancy as an au pair or nanny, mother’s helpers were the teenaged daughters of family friends. Daughters who were too old for camp and too young for legitimate summer jobs. Ostensibly it was a win-win – the beach moms had someone to ride herd and keep an eye on the savages and the families back home could relax knowing their daughters were chaperoned during a healthful summer of sun and surf.

Right.

Truth was the moms were snockered on thermoses of lime rickies and vodka gimlets by noon. The mother’s helpers clustered together on blankets near the lifeguard stands and flirted with the whistle gods. The mother’s helpers worked on their tans with baby oil and their highlights with spritzes of lemon juice, and ignored us completely. On Friday nights when the dads showed up the mother’s helpers had the night off, ha!, and while we wearing dry clothes and shoes for the first time in a week sat through boring swanky seafood dinners with the parents (lemon wedges galore) the mother’s helpers ran amok with the lifeguards and boardwalk bums and often didn’t show back up until late Sunday afternoon. The beach parents kept mum because they didn’t want the helpers’ parents at home to flip out and/or risk losing their child minders halfway through the season. Us kids? Made no nevermind to us. Except for a couple hours every week when the dads took us wave hopping and kite flying the only ones actually paying attention to us were the Sicilian grandmas. The nonnas gave us sandwiches, kissed our sand scrapes, and laid us down for naps in the shade of their umbrellas. I remember falling asleep to the whoosh and retreat of the waves and the musical Calabro of the nonnas gossiping. Even then there was the smell of fresh lemon. Lemon being squeezed onto scungilli and calamari and popo, the tentacled horrors the nonnas bought from the dawn fisherman at the docks after 7:00am mass.

Either I didn’t know the right families or that particular era of shore experience was over but by the time I started wearing this there were no mother’s helpers jobs to be had.

 

 

I did wear Love’s Lemon though and their Baby Soft. Mega creepy to think about the latter now, but in the late 70s it seemed normal enough. But then many many oddities seemed normal enough in the 70s.

Wow, look at all the writing juice I squeezed from lemon wedges!

 

Punfully yours, ~LA

 

 

Watery Coffee

Now that I am a bum again and no longer have coworkers and customers to jabber with I think I’ll be bending your ears more often.

I, like most of you, am exulting in the turn in the weather. Few things are better than the first days of fall when the air is crisp and everything smells like apples. My only real complaint with the coming of the cold is giving up sandals. I’ll miss the ease of wearing dresses too but it’s saying good bye to the flip-flops that really irks. My feet HATE shoes. As a free spirit (ie: unemployed person) I could opt for the classic thick socks and Birkenstocks. In fact I could really go all in and wear them with leggings under a batik skirt topped with a homemade sweater I assembled from used pot holders and muppet fur, but I’m not feeling quite that fancy. Being weird takes a lot effort. All that haunting thrift stores and jumble sales to find those essential wardrobe pieces for your bag lady ensembles, assembling your collection of nutty hats, to say nothing of catching and skinning muppets to make sweaters with. Frankly? It’s just too much work. If I’m bothered by the hassle of having to wear shoes and socks it’s for darn sure I don’t have the patience to be making necklaces from dip-dyed pasta and roadkill tails.

Even if dressing myself is a chore everything else about fall is crazy good. We already have pots of mums on the stoop. Mick’s idea. A compliment and a love offering. When we met Mick was the most holiday hating guy ever. He made Scrooge and the Grinch look like pikers. Then love happened and just like those two more famous guys Mick’s heart opened. Life became this joyous thing. Now Mick is all about the happy. His absolute favorite thing is seeing me smile.

A long, long time ago in another blog in another life I described a favorite daydream. I wanted to be adored. I wanted to be someone’s darling. At the time I attributed my scorched loveless landscape to my lack of femininity. I was simply too big. Too beefy and capable for anyone to spoil. But oh! How I longed for it! I put it thusly: ‘I want to be one of those women that men do crazy things for. I want a man who’d climb a mountain, swim across a piranha-filled river, hack his way through a jungle and fight off natives to finally arrive at my door with a curare dart sticking out of his neck to present me with a diamond ring and a pint of Cherry Garcia.’

He’s here.

And I didn’t have to lose an ounce or make myself smaller in any other way either. There wasn’t anything wrong with me, I just hadn’t met the right guy yet. And now that we’ve found each other we’re both about the happy. After I post this I’m going to the kitchen to make his favorite mozzarella/tomato salad and bake a key lime pie. Because…you know.

 

I’m going to make a fresh pot of coffee too. The one I made this morning tastes like dishwater. All my love, ~LA

Ramble On

One of the best things about the internet is how broad its reach is. I just finished watching a half-hour long segment on Al Jazeera about Chinese tourists in Paris. The narrator was British, the crew had an Australian cameraman, an Arabic sound engineer, and a Moroccan producer. My Mandarin isn’t wonderful but what I could catch was translated properly in the subtitles. I am always amused by the culture clash of the mainland Chinese and the rest of the world. Plus as an American it’s gratifying there are now hordes of tourists worse than us. Having grown up with the ‘Ugly American’ trope I’m quite happy to hand the title of ‘worst tourists’ to the Chinese.

Another recent viewing was a tongue-in-cheek miniseries called ‘Very British Problems’. Catch it on Netflix, it’s really quite funny and informative. Narrated by Mrs Weasley (aka: Julie Walters) it’s a semi-comic study of British angst. Watching it I realized again how American I am. Aside from the fact that I loathe guns and truly do have respect for other cultures I might as well have Uncle Sam tattooed on my chest because I am that American. Like a humongus Labrador Retriever I’m just a dopey friendly simple to please oaf who is annoying and amusing in equal measure. Clap a piece of duct tape over my mouth and I will immediately shift into sign language and scribbling notes on napkins, nothing on Earth can shut me up. I am emotional, enthusiastic, and have zero social phobias. You can drop me into the middle of a gang of Taliban and I swear that within a quarter hour I’d have them showing me how to make lamb qorma and doing the hokey pokey. I am harmlessly rude and utterly irresistible.

Between Netflix and Prime I am usually well fixed for two of my favorite things- Chilean movies and Korean soap operas. I keep trying telenovelas but find the men off-putting. It’s the combo of slimy persona and excessive grooming…yuck. I’ve never been into smoldering pretty boys.

Oh! One more foreign movie. No worries, it’s in English. In fact it is English. ‘A Royal Night Out’. Adorable. Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret escape the palace to celebrate VE day with ‘the people’. Pure fluff but frightfully well done.

Now if I can just convince the streaming services to hurry up with more seasons of ‘The Great British Baking Show’ I’ll be all kinds of happy. I don’t watch it on PBS because I only watch TV on my TV when I go to bed. I am absolutely out of the habit of making it a date to watch a show at a certain time and do not have dvr. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid spoilers and stupid Netflix only has season one. First world problems, eh?

I will probably die in this stupid little town without having been anywhere but thanks to the internet the world comes to me.

 

Much love from your armchair traveling pal, ~LA

Go Speed Racer Go!

Finally drove my car. The climate control vents are in a better position than my former Rogue’s. The stereo is nowhere near loud enough. The Bluetooth syncs easily and reads texts aloud. Sebastian amuses me by sending texts full of silly words and swears. If the driver’s seat in a car is height adjustable I sink it down as low as possible because I sit very straight and am very tall, however the new car’s seat is so low I feel engulfed by the car rather than the pilot of it. Adjustments are ongoing.

My maiden solo voyage was to the bread store. It was weird to be out on the road with school buses and not transporting a child of my own. Sebastian has no need of Mom’s taxi anymore. Thank goodness Mick works for a school district! Otherwise my life would be completely school-less and I don’t think I could bear that. Except for a span when Alex was still too young for kindergarten and was ‘politely’ uninvited from the nursery school program I’d enrolled him in with hopes of overcoming his complete disdain for people his own age (he had no problem getting along with adults but kids freaked him out and confused him) my life has wound itself around the school year since I was in nursery school. It’s been a long time since I was student myself but even dropping out of college to support the ex while he got his degree (HUGE mistake, duh on me) school’s still been there.  After getting the ex graduated I spent 25 years ushering my offspring through school. My Life Clock is still as synced to the school year as my phone is to my car. Yes, Sebastian is attending class at the local SUNY outlet but aside from one trip to campus before he had his license I have zero knowledge of his school doings. A deliberate “Put down the spit-bath napkin and back away slowly” move on my part. A purposeful shove out of the nest and far harder on me than on him. After the C-section the hospital offered help in how to attach him to my breast, nineteen years later there’s no one around to show me how me let go. I screwed everything up so, so badly with my first born that I live in quiet terror of fucking up a second time. Figuring out when to mom and when to shrug and leave him on his own…GAH! And Sebastian’s no bloody help at all because he’s too worried about bothering me to ask for help when he needs it and too polite to tell me to bugger off when I’ve overstepped. Honestly someone needs to come over and administer Gibbs’ slaps to both of us.

 

The other day a friend was fan-girling with total demented glee over one of her friend’s close encounter with a celebrity. Oh how my friend adores this celebrity! EEEE! Swoon! To think someone she knows actually got to meet the celebrity and take pics and…and…EEEEEEEEE!!!!!

But here’s the thing. I happen to know through friends in the biz that this celebrity is a shitweasel. Shady business practices. Mistreatment of underlings. Poor behavior with hotel staff. Rich as a nabob and stiffs the airport limo driver. Scum. For real, this ‘celebrity’ is dreck. My first impulse was to barge in demanding the squealing stop immediately and then load my friend up with the inside scoop on what a crap basket this person was. Righteous Woman here to save the day! Then I thought on it some more and realized there’d be zero good done. All I’d be doing is spoiling my friend’s fun and her friend’s fun to no purpose. The walking cesspool would not become one iota better. The world would not be saved. Nor would all the people this noisome dirtwad had mistreated and stolen from finally get justice and their money. Even though I honestly believe this ‘celebrity’ needs far more than a Gibbs’ slap and I’d be speaking truth and not gossip I wouldn’t fix a damn thing, I’d just be a buzzkill. So I doffed my do-gooder cape and unclamped my hands from the Magnificent Keyboard of Truth and her pal Smite-y Mouse and went away quietly.

It’s about time I learned to put my friends’ feelings above my need to set the record straight. For sure if she was about to do some work for the scummy famous person I’d say something, but to pass on what I know just because I’ve got the goods on the ill behavior and miserable character of the scuzz, meh. But honestly? It was tough. Oy, the passionate intoxication of bringing down the bad guys! Too much of this when I was a kid.

 

Btw, did you ever stop to really think about Underdog? He’s just this little schlep of a shoeshine boy but then he takes a pill and suddenly he can fly! He can knock down buildings! He fights wolf-cat gangsters in zoot suits! Martians! Evil Mr Potter from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’! Underdog is not a superhero, Underdog is on drugs. Good ones.

 

Much love, ~LA

50 Things You Mostly Know About Me Already

Hey Kids, there’s a meme running around FB and I stand helpless against its seductive powers. “LA? Darling LA, won’t you pleeeeeease talk about yourself by answering questions you’ve answered many times before? You know you want to. Memes are the cocktail party small talk of the internet and you, oh loquacious one, are the queen of fluffy chitchat. Do the meme, LA, doooo it.”

Okay, meme, you talked me into it.

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER SOMEONE? Nope. My younger sister, however, was named after our maternal grandmother. When I realized this I objected. The favoritism already ran thick and smothering over everything and my mother’s hastily gabbled offering that my own name was meant to be a hip modern version of my paternal grandmother’s name was complete bullshit and we both knew it. Even at 5 my BS meter was lethally accurate. I retreated to my cupboard under the stairs and brooded about this until the next outrageous blast of favoritism knocked me over again. If I remember the timeline correctly not long afterward Gidget and I were presented with our first two wheelers. Gidget’s a shiny new one with handlebar streamers and a squeezy horn and mine was a dented slightly rusty thing bought at the neighbor’s garage sale. No. I am NOT kidding.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? Wait, I stopped crying? When? Are you sure?

DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Not any more. It was okay-ish prior to getting a computer, but since? Gibberish. I can’t even PRINT without it looking messy. Filling in forms is hard, y’all.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Bologna. The nice kind from the deli, not that gritty shit from Oscar Meyer.

DO YOU HAVE ANY KIDS? Why, yes, yes I do. With a teaspoon’s worth of contribution from the ex I have produced two brand new human beings.

IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOURSELF? Absolutely not! I tell Mick all the time I don’t understand how he puts up with me. Seriously. If I had to live with me I’d go nuts. Smug, know-it-all who always has to have the last word. Yeesh.

DO YOU USE SARCASM? Not a whole lot. I’m more of an absurdist. Also try not to dish what I can’t take and sarcasm hurts my feelings.

DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes, all original equipment sans three wisdom teeth. I do have an interesting assortment of scars though. Including a big lumpy one on the roof of my mouth that I got from a curtain rod. Really. That’s just too weird to make up.

WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Nope. Nor sky dive, zip line, or walk out on those glass boxes and bridges that seem to be cropping up everywhere. Zero desire to stand on a piece of glass 90 storeys above Chicago. I am acrophobic and I am fat. Either alone is bad enough, together? Fugeddaboudit. British friends, you never have to worry about having to take me on the London Eye, I’m all good with a walking tour and maybe a double-decker bus ride.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Rice Krispies. Simple. Nostalgic. Doesn’t rip up the inside of my mouth like Cap’n Crunch does.

DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Are you kidding? Did you miss the thing about me being fat? Fat people wear slip-ons.

DO YOU THINK YOU’RE STRONG?  People tell me I am all the time. Both in the good way and the pejorative. I get kudos for dealing with some heavy life burdens. I also get a lot of quack about having a VERY STRONG PERSONALITY. When I was younger I had many strong opinions about things. Nowadays I’m pretty bendy. I cut people a lot, a lot of slack. Unless you’re mean. Then you’re instantly dead to me. Done. Over. Finito.

 WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?  Schwan’s Raspberry Rumble. Oy, heaven. Cherry Garcia is a close second.

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Their energy signature. Flaky people call this an ‘aura’. To me it’s a Sherlock thing of noticing details, body language, what kind of wattage someone’s pumping out, and how they position themselves in the room. This comes from me being a healer, a nosy person, and a drunk’s kid. When you grow up under the volatile irrational rule of a drunk you learn to read people FAST. You need to know instantly if this person is going to put a hurt on you.

WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF? I don’t ever give myself enough credit. I am plagued with undervaluing everything I do and consequently feel like a failure. All the time. Even in a room crowded with people who love me and credit me with helping them/teaching them/amusing them and the tables could be piled with all the cool art I’ve made and the funny oddities I collect and a veritable feast I’d turned out from very simple foodstuffs I will still know in my heart I’m no great shakes. Still a loser and that I totally need to try harder.

WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING RIGHT NOW? No trousers. No shoes. My lovely costume is a knee-length tee-shirt: it’s grey with pink piping, and beneath I have on a pair of black underpants with pink and white polka-dots. It’s Casual Thursday here at Casa Sage.

WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? A few off-brand grape Tootsie Rolls. Mick brings them home from the gym. I like them when they’re still warm from his pocket and are all squishy.

WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? As much nothing as possible. My headache is wicked today. So I have the Bose on (they are not complete noise canceling ones but they help) and the window unit is droning its whooshy white noise.

IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Brick red. It’s a deep, sturdy color. Not flashy but quite lovely in its own way.

 FAVORITE SMELL? It’s a tie between cinnamon and old books.

WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? Neurologist’s appointment booker. I can’t remember her name but she has a beta fish on her desk, its name is Gamma.

FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH? Competitive ballroom dancing. That and cheerleading. The national spelling bee is good too.

HAIR COLOR THATS REAL? Currently mine is uncolored. As far as hair colors that occur naturally on other people? Silver grey. Last episode of NCIS I watched Jamie Lee Curtis was making out with Mark Harmon and I about died of gorgeous hair overload.

EYE COLOR? Mine are green but not startlingly so. Fave on other people? Green but a brighter lighter shade than my own. Sebastian’s are a fabulous sea green/pearly grey. Awesome.

DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No, but have in the past. Not well or comfortably but I had them. I wear too much eye makeup for contacts to be easy. Also nowadays I have naked face when my glasses are off. Sans specs my face looks wrong, even to me.

FAVORITE FOOD? Gosh. This always comes down to potatoes or bread. That’s where I get stuck. Probably potatoes as they are more versatile and can be grown without seeds. And you can make vodka with them. But life without bread is a grim prospect indeed.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Bwahahahaha! Need you ask? My favorite sentence is: And they lived happily ever after.

LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? ‘Sweet Bean’ A beautiful quiet little import from Japan. Currently on Netflix. If you enjoy movies that are more character studies than plot driven and don’t mind subtitles I think you will like this one. I liked it a lot.

WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? This was covered earlier.

SUMMER OR WINTER? Winter, winter, a thousand times winter.

HUGS OR KISSES? Hugs. I am a champion hugger. Plus as a former smoker I am always paranoid about how my mouth tastes and what my breath is like. But hugs? I was built to hug.

WHAT BOOK(S) ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING? ‘Finder’ by Emma Bull. ‘Insomnia’ by Stephen King. ‘The Dovekeepers’ by Alice Hoffman. ‘Women’s Choices in Natural Healing’ by Adriane Fugh-Berman MD

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES? I never know how to answer this. To me a hobby is a pursuit which requires skill/travel/money/a special place in your house. Birding is a hobby. Coin collecting. Crafting. I read, watch movies, fuck around on the internet, play a few video games, and I learn stuff. Randomly. Without direction or even intention. I just like finding things out. I can hardly call being curious a hobby.

WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? A black Volkswagen. Looks to be a Newbie circa 1999. There’s also a big smear of pink nail polish. Ooops.

WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON T.V. LAST? ‘Planet Earth’ on BBC America. It was about an orca who’s taught herself to make waves that wash the seals off the ice floes. Clever.

FAVORITE SOUND? Water. All kinds. Except dripping faucets.

ROLLING STONES or BEATLES? The Beatles were like some fantastically wonderful freak of nature. A happy earthquake, maybe, that came in, shook up and changed everything and then was gone. The Beatles happened and then they were over and ever since the rivers run in all crazy directions in their new courses and the horizon is strange and fantastic with new mountains and valleys to explore. But the Stones? The Rolling Stones are Life. They’re here year after year, growing and evolving. Sometimes in great gaudy bursts and others like how clock hands move- you don’t see them do it but then you look up and  it’s later and supper is on the table. A new album is out and you can’t help but love the new stuff even though it’s not much like the old stuff. I adore and honor the Beatles, but the Stones are a mural painted the entire length of my life’s corridor.

WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE TRAVELED? In one go? That would be the summer on the road in the little green bus. Over 11,000 miles. Epic road trip. The greatest distance from home? The Olympic Peninsula. I assumed it was Cancun, but that’s 1,560 miles by air and the Olympic Peninsula is 2,400 as the crow flies. Who knew?

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? I have a really good ear for music parody like Weird Al. Quite knacky at fitting new lyrics to established songs and making it funny.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Ramapo, NY. In a hospital that got torn down not long after. Heh. They should have sealed the hellmouth when they had the chance, but too late! I’m here!

BATMAN or SUPERMAN? Batman is a creepy vigilante who if he wasn’t wildly wealthy would be locked up somewhere. And Superman is an illegal alien. Plus Superman was sent to Earth to help everybody not just Americans. If I could do what he can I’d be wiping out the bastards who run child militias, sweat shops, the polluters, Monsanto, exploiters of the sick and the poor all over the whole planet. I’d be putting things to rights like I have in my Sim world. And when the big pharma assholes and the fricken Illuminati and whoever else actually runs this lopsided shitshow march up to complain I’d be like, “Yeah? Just try me. I’m Superman, bitches.”

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOR? Blue-no! [he is also thrown over the edge] YEELLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!

WHERE DID YOU MEET YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER? Match.com, baby. Believe the ads. More dates. More marriages. Worked for me!

DOGS or CATS? As I have not eaten either I really can’t say. I think dogs would be better for stews while cats are very flexible and stretchy so I bet you could make decent cat calamari from them.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CHILDHOOD MEMORY? When I was 11 I got a basketball for my birthday. That spring I used to take it to the school playground and practice. The joy of discovering I could do a layup from either side of the net and could sink a one-handed jumper from mid-court was overwhelming. I was so proud!

WHERE ALL HAVE YOU LIVED? Mostly on my backside with a book in my hand.

CAN YOU PLAY AN INSTRUMENT? I play a pretty fair kazoo. And can knock out ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’ on the chord organ.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE QUALITY IN YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER? His willingness to listen, learn, and grow. He’s so brave! I wish I were more like that.

This is actually only 49. In looking at the source material I see she skipped over question 15. No matter.

This is a chord organ, btw. In case you’ve never seen one.

Off in search of companionship and dinner, ~LA

When In Doubt…

Go with a list.

The world is on fire as usual. So. Here’s what’s doing with me.

NCIS: I’d forgotten how much fun this show is. I’d gotten away from police procedurals because I mostly need to live in Happy Sparkle Pony Land and even fictional dead people hurt me. But the last few nights I’ve been hanging with Gibbs and the gang again and it’s been good to see them. Currently on season 9. Don’t know if I’ll bother after Ziva leaves. She’s my favorite.

Stick-on bifocals: These are actually magnifying reading glass lenses which attach like window cling holiday decorations, only they go on the inside of your sunglasses and not your front windows. (Which, now that I think on it, my glasses ARE my front windows.) Anyway, when I bought my shades I went with the single vision for financial reasons, no way am I spending a mortgage payment on sunglasses, but immediately regretted it once I began actually using my shades. Constantly changing glasses is a pain in the tushie but Blinky the Mole here cannot read her phone or much of anything else close up without the bifocals. Enter the stick-on lenses. I’m still figuring out which diopter will work best, I believe my actual glasses work out to a 1.75+, but I need to go to Rite-Aid and test a bunch of reading glasses with my actual sunglasses jammed over top of them and read the fine print on a bottle of sunscreen before I am sure.

Being God: See above about needing to live in my happy place. Friends, there is nowhere happier than Riverview when I am the Lord Almighty. A lot of people would be bored with my game world with its carefully raised children and tidy gardens and how no one has any uncomfortable character traits like kleptomania or being evil, but I love it. Aside from the occasional house fire and meteor strike life is good and it’s all kinds of fine to be able to disappear into this calm little corner of the Sim universe. Of course I laugh at myself…

 

But who is harmed? No one. Not even a Sim.

Rogue: No, not the mutant, my car. My new car. I know, most people would lead with that. A new car? Really? And you’re just now getting around to saying something? Well, aren’t you Ms La-Dee-Dah? Yeah, I dig it. In my defense- since the advent of Mick I’ve changed vehicles more often than I’ve changed purses. And not like the old days when I had to keep swapping an old totally broken piece of shit for a slightly less dysfunctional old piece of shit aka the clunker du jour method, in Mick’s World one actually trades in perfectly fine cars for newer ones. Why? Partly because he knows jackshit about car repair and lives in terror of life without manufacturer warrantees, and partly because my guy is all about the new. I used to worry this meant he traded in wives for newer fancier models too but so far so good. Mick cannot and will not understand the concept of life without a car payment. The idea that one pays off one’s car note and then drives the car for years afterward free and clear of debt is too scary and foreign to him. It smacks of poverty, the scary soul-sucking kind with generic mac-n-cheese and buying fuel oil 5 gallons at a time to warm the house just enough to keep the pipes from bursting. He is very much the grasshopper to my ant, but he’s not entirely wrong. What did all my thriftiness get me? A life without nice things. That’s it. My sacrifice got me nowhere, including Europe. All it did was enable my ex, Peter Pan, to live out his lost boy fantasies without consequence. So. I put the brakes on the worst of Mick’s spendthrift ways and he makes sure I have pretty clothes and I go to the movies and out to eat and most of all, that I drive safe, clean, reliable (snazzy) vehicles.

Enter Rogue #2:

I am not in love with it yet. It’s a complicated mix of gender politics and marketing, unprepared change, and guarding my tender heart from getting too attached to ANY car now that I live Mick’s way. Trading in my old Rogue hurt. A lot. My cars rank somewhere between pets and coworkers in how dear they become to me. And giving up my champagne colored bubble-shaped pal for this butched-up angular beefy thing in gunmetal has been a shock. Yet I was the one who rolled the deal. The lease on the former Rogue was up in Feb and I knew if I scooted into the dealership just as the 2017’s were hitting that I could score a mighty deal on a 2016. And so I did. I didn’t BS the salesperson, I laid it out. I wanted a no money deal with an unchanged payment and I wanted to wash the last six payments off my lease. Do that and I’d sign TODAY. It’s been a lot of years since I sold ’em but I haven’t lost any knowhow about to dicker for a car. Mean what you say and you WILL get your deal. Remember that, my darlings. This doesn’t just apply to buying cars either.

Bad Eggplant: I actually blew it. Screwed up cooking something. Big time. I promised MIL another pan of eggplant parm. So the other day I got out my good frying pan and bread crumbs and yadda yadda. Holy moly, did I muff it! The oil in the pan was too deep and I couldn’t maintain the temperature and despite pressing them properly the eggplant rounds weren’t firm enough and…blech. Soggy, greasy, all around gross. Frankly I was shocked. This made twice now recently that I goofed something at the stove. Last week I made Mick a raspberry cobbler and the dough was flabby. Didn’t rise well at all. He ate it, but not my best effort and he agreed. Then this eggplant disaster. Yuck. Surprisingly I am not freaking out. I know my cooking hasn’t gone off the rails in any kind of huge or permanent way. A mediocre cobbler and some lousy eggplant does NOT undo the thousands of great meals I’ve cooked. Nor is it indicative of anything to come, except that I have to double check my ingredients for freshness more often.

Judy Blume: ‘In The Unlikely Event’. Wow. This, along with ‘Sally J Freeman’ are her most personal books. At least to me. The most autobiographical. I could feel it. The memories, the texture of a real life lived. I don’t demand this of fiction, in fact it’s the opposite of fiction, isn’t it? But when a writer can coax a story from a place inside their hearts, their most private self, it’s really something special. This is not to say this book was an easy read. Honestly the first half was confusing as all hell. It jumped from character to character to character without ever giving enough context that I could keep them all straight. This is the downside of this most personal kind of fiction- when writing from that private place it’s difficult to see that the readers weren’t there with you. So no, we don’t automatically get the complicated web of who’s who and why what happens to those characters is a Big Deal. It’s all about the context. For instance many of my friends’ kids are starting or going back to college right now. Sebastian starts Monday. To someone without context my son going off to his first college class is no biggie. A nice thing but unspectacular. But if you add in the backstory…wow. MAJOR deal. Without the texture of Sebastian’s struggle and arduous journey his bopping off next Monday in his own wee truck with his valid driver’s license going to his very first class at college with tuition and textbook paid for with money he earned at his job it would be, “Yeah, and?” You guys know better. You remember the hell of yellow cup and special ed and expulsion and the hospital and the years and years of weary battle to use the potty, sit still, get through a day without a tantrum and self-harm, to learn how to speak, write, communicate. So Judy Blume’s ‘In The Unlikely Event’ is a bit like dumping you guys into the story when Sebastian was a junior in high school. Takes a while to catch up.

Other media consumption:

Movies: Tina Fey’s ‘Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’- 4 stars out of 5. ‘Jason Bourne’ – 3.5. Nice bod, meh plot. ‘Star Trek: Beyond’ – 3 out of 5. Don’t misunderstand, I adore the new reboot. The casting is dead on and despite myself I have a crush Chris Pine. (And who doesn’t love Quinto’s Spock?) However this was a forgettable addition to the series. And my heart hurt a little the whole time knowing this was Anton Yelchin’s last voyage as Chekov.

Netflix: ‘Stranger Things’ -WOW! 5 out of 5. ‘Freaks and Geeks’ goes to the Twilight Zone. Awesome. Hurry up season 2! ‘Penny Dreadful’ – Is it weird to enjoy a show where you don’t like any of the characters? Snaps to Showtime for avoiding HBO’s drooling love of rape scenes. Additional snaps for showing as many male full frontals as female. However I don’t watch ‘Penny Dreadful’ just for the random flash of dick, I am enthralled with the costuming on this show. Ditto the set dressing though I think they could spring for more than one handsome cab, it’s in every outdoor scene! ‘Penny Dreadful’ is just offbeat enough to keep me coming back despite the gore and that it is totally NOT a shiny happy place.  ‘Marco Polo’ – holy moly. Rarely have I run across a show so meticulously researched and staged that still manages to be a walloping good time to watch. #1 on my list for you to check out. ‘Ever After High’ – Go ahead, mock all you like, I refuse to recant. This odd little loli anime princess show absolutely ROCKS.  ‘Once Upon A Time’- of course. ‘Good Witch’ – ditto. All the ‘TinkerBell’ movies. Buffy reruns as needed. And any and every documentary on progressive politics, social issues, the environment, immigrant history, and cooking.

Amazon Prime: ‘Boardwalk Empire’ – Steve Buscemi is a delight. ‘Downton Abbey’- season six. And they all lived happily ever after. Ahhh…

Books: Gosh, it’s an absurdly long list even to go back a few weeks. I don’t need to explain this to you guys, y’all get it. So. The highlight reel. ‘Neverwhere’ – Neil Gaiman. ‘Bazaar of Bad Dreams’ – Stephen King. Picked this up and put it down several times. Uncle Stevie bites hard in this one, be warned. ‘Chestnut Street’ – Maeve Binchy. Don’t know who’s sifting and editing her slush pile, but the posthumous ghost writers are doing a good job. ‘Assholes’ – Aaron James. Part of my quest for understanding the essential cosmic hurt of my life…Why are people so mean? This book puts a decent framework onto this (to me) inexplicable lifestyle. Books 1-4 of ‘The Selection’ series by Kiera Cass. YA. Sort of Princess Diaries meets Hunger Games. Fun. Decently written. Books 1-3 of Cate Price’s ‘Going Through The Notions’ mysteries. I enjoy cozies if they’re not too coy and precious. Cate Price strikes a healthy balance ala Charlotte MacLeod in her ability to be fluffy without being dumb.

A complete list? Not by any means. I take in movies and books like baleen whales do plankton. As do most of you, so need to go on about it. But a decent enough overview of late June – early August. Maybe a few titles for you to try too.

 

No longer employed but keeping busy, ~LA

In honor of ‘Stranger Things’ and my homegirl 11.